Hands on: Compression tricks

Compression is one of the trickier effects to master for those starting out in music-making.

When it’s used in the traditional way, its presence should be hardly noticeable.

It should make your music sound fuller and punchier, without stamping a recognisable mark on your tracks.

But there are times when you may want to forget tradition and use compression as an upfront effect.

That’s what we’re going to do in this column. Instead of showing you the right way to use compression, we’re going to show you an outrageously wrong way to use it. Rather than blending into the background, we’ll show you how to push compression to the front of your mix to give your music a heavy, pumping sound.

To do this, we’ll use the compressor’s sidechain and change the way the signal is routed to the compressor. We’ll use the MClass compressor module in Reason 3, but you should be able to apply the same principles in other music packages. All you need is a compression module with a sidechain input.

A compressor is normally wired up so the music you want to compress runs directly into the main input. The compressor then reacts automatically to the dynamics of the signal – or in layman’s terms, the differences in the volume of the signal as the music plays. However, many compressors also have a sidechain input and this allows you to be a bit more creative with your signal routings.

If you use the sidechain input on the compressor, it no longer reacts to the dynamics of the signal coming through the main input. Instead, it responds to the dynamics of the signal being piped into the sidechain input. So the compression of the sidechain signal is superimposed on the signal coming through the main input.

You will have heard this effect before – probably at a wedding, where a cheesy DJ is shouting “remember folks – there’s no charge for dancing!” over the top of some dodgy Justin Timberlake track. As the DJ talks, the volume of the music is automatically ducked out so that you can hear what he’s saying. This is achieved by running the mic through the sidechain of the compressor.

The sidechain is also used a lot in dance music to make the music pump heavily in partnership with a bass line pattern or a bass drum kick. We’re going to show you how to achieve this effect by running a sustained pad sound into the main input of your compressor and then feeding a bass line into the sidechain. The result will be an effect where the pad sound seems to duck and bounce in time with the bass line.

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